DEAL OF THE WEEK
Bantam Enters Matlin’s ‘Forest’
After a four-house auction, Jenny Chen at Bantam bought Lisa Matlin’s debut novel, Find Myself Within a Dark Forest. The two-book, world rights agreement was brokered by Naomi Davis at Bookends. The publisher said the novel was pitched as “The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Wife Upstairs” and is about “an influencer with multiple stolen personas who buys a murder house to renovate—except things go sideways fast, and she wonders whether someone could be onto her ruse or if it might be the house itself.”
McElroy and HarperVia ‘Collide’
Isle McElroy sold world rights to People Collide to Rakesh Satyal at HarperVia. The novel, set for 2023, is about a man who wakes up alone in his apartment in Bulgaria and finds he is in his wife’s body. What follows, Harper said, “is a search across Europe for a missing woman—and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience.” Harper added that People Collide “throws refreshing new light on everything we thought we knew about love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are.” Marya Spence at Janklow & Nesbit brokered the deal.
Dev Gets ‘Vibrant’ at Kaling’s New Imprint
In one of the first acquisitions for Mindy’s Book Studio, Mindy Kaling’s boutique imprint at Amazon Publishing, Alicia Clancy took world English rights to Sonali Dev’s The Vibrant Years. Set for December, the novel follows, the publisher said, three women who “set out on a journey of self-discovery, hilariously embracing their missteps, impulsive decisions, and cringeworthy dates that ultimately upend their lives for the better as they learn to live life on their own terms.” Dev, the bestselling author of the Rajes series, was represented by Alexandra Machinist at ICM Partners.
‘Big, Fat’ Anthology Sells to Page Street
For Page Street Publishing, Lauren Knowles bought world English rights to My Big, Fat, Desi Wedding. The YA anthology, sold by Gordon Warnock at Fuse Literary, is being edited by Prerna Pickett. Warnock called the book a “genre-bending” collection that “celebrates the diversity of Desi cultures through a universally epic event featuring drama, fashion, food, and one merry, meddling auntie.” It will feature stories from Payal Doshi, Sarah Mughal, and Aamna Qureshi, and is set for spring 2023.
Whitmire’s ‘Peggram’ Finds Home at Viking
Ethelene Whitmire, a former librarian-in-residence at Yale University and the current chair of the department of African American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sold The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram to Viking. Emily Wunderlich took world rights to the narrative nonfiction work from Jennifer Herrera at the David Black Agency at auction. Viking says the book follows “the life of a queer, Black man of humble origins, who graduated from Harvard at the top of his class and continued his studies in Europe on the brink of WWII.” It offers “a lens on the pursuit of dignity and beauty against the backdrop of Black Americans’ struggle for basic rights in a nation entering war.”
AstroTwins Land at Element
Astrologers Ophira and Tali Edut, known as the AstroTwins, sold a currently untitled lifestyle book to Simon Element. In it, the publisher said, the siblings, who consult for various celebrities, reveal their “astrology-based archetype system to help readers optimize their professional and personal lives.” Jackie Ashton at Lucinda Literary handled the world rights agreement, with Veronica Alvarado acquiring at Simon Element.
